An abandoned lifeboat at world’s end (2011)

https://mikedashhistory.com/2011/02/13/an-abandoned-lifeboat-at-worlds-end/

by PokemonNoGo • 8 years ago

105 25 8 years ago

vortico• 8 years ago

I absolutely love good writing like this. If this was a journalist's quick report or a Wikipedia article, it wouldn't be as riviting as this is, and I might have lost interest partially through.

baddox• 8 years ago

A rare instance of fascinating writing in the “long-form” genre. I would expect a long-form article on this topic to begin with an intriguing paragraph, then, immediately upon mentioning the name of explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier, diverge into a dozen paragraphs describing in the floweriest language Bouvet’s grandmother’s lifelong love of daffodils.

gambiting3• 8 years ago

As luck would have it, there is an expedition to Bouvet right now and yes, you can see their progress live and read updates on facebook. I've read about this mystery years ago, it's fascinating that there are people there right this second as I write this.

https://share.garmin.com/bouvet

https://www.facebook.com/groups/639362206232014/about/

mmjaa• 8 years ago

It would be amazing to get a current picture of the lifeboat.. if its still out there and somehow still visible.

gambiting3• 8 years ago

The article mentions that an expedition just few years later didn't observe the presence of a lifeboat(or anything else) so either it was washed into the sea, or they didn't look for it. I'm sure these guys are going to have a look for any signs, they are planning to stay on the island for 14-16 days.

nautilus12• 8 years ago

i now want to know this guy

andyjohnson0• 8 years ago

For those without Facebook accounts, the expedition website is at http://www.bouvetdx.org/

24gttghh2• 8 years ago

So from what I can gather, they're going all the way to Bouvet Island to bounce radio waves off the Moon and back to Earth. Why??? To say they did it? I don't understand this hobby.

lb1lf2• 8 years ago

Twofold - minimum!

First of all - many amateur radio operators take great interest in having been in contact with lots of countries and territories.

Some are trivial - I just checked, so far this year I’ve got some 80 German stations in my log - some are exceedingly rare (Like Bouvet. Or North Korea, as the authorities there have a less than enlightened stance on individuals communicating with the outside world.)

The din you’d hear if you tuned a radio receiver to a frequency used by the Bouvet exoedition would be similar to what you’d hear if you ventured into a stadium packed with tweens and yelled that you had tickets for a Bieber meet and greet to whoever wanted them the most - literally tens of thousands of operators calling them at once - some for the associated bragging rights, some for testing their station’s capabilities...

More specifically about the moonbounce thing - that is HARD; you blast as much power as you can get hold of into the biggest, most badass antenna you can afford, and then, if the stars align, the gods smile &c - your signal is strong enough to get reflected back to earth where someone else may hear it (if they, too, went through major inconveniences to hone their antenna badassery enough to pick up a gnat’s fart from half a million miles away.

There’s hardly any rational reason why one would do such a thing, but the sense of accomplishment once you nail it is indescribable.

speps• 8 years ago

Comment from March 2016 by "quasi-libet":

Finally, I have found out the end of the text on page 129 of “Transactions of the Oceanographical Institute”.

“The scientific reconnaissance vessel “Slava-9” began his regular 13th cruise with the “Slava” Antarctic whaling fleet on 22 October 1958 … On 27 November she got to Bouvet Island. A group of sailors landed which couldn’t leave the island in time because of worsened weather and stayed on it about 3 days. The people were withdrawn only by helicopter on 29 November”.

The mystery is resolved. The answer turned out to be a quite prosaic one. I am even feeling kind of regret for it.

ocfnash• 8 years ago

SPOILER ALERT ^^

gambiting3• 8 years ago

So pretty much what the author suspected - it was a soviet vessel, and the details of the adventure were most likely hidden deep in an ex-soviet archive somewhere, almost impossible to find(until someone did, obviously).

caf• 8 years ago

Well, with the completely unexpected addition that the mysterious flattened copper sheet may well have been left by a ham radio operator who made an expedition to the island just for the purpose of making radio contact from there.

arethuza• 8 years ago

"A speck of ice in the middle of a freezing fastness: a few square miles of uninhabited volcanic basalt groaning under several hundred feet of glacier, scraped raw by gales, shrouded by drifts of sea-fog, and utterly devoid of trees, shelter, or landing places."

Makes me think of:

"I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts."

ggambetta• 8 years ago

Not only that remote island has satellite imagery in Google Maps... it is in 3D.

tw1010• 8 years ago

Why is it that we get so affected by symbolism like that? Is it just because telling stories is such a big part of our culture, or is it something deeper, more physiological than that? Does anyone know of a good book that can shine more light on humanity's strange relationship to symbols?

jacobush• 8 years ago

It's all we ever do. Clothes with symbols, as symbols. Computers doing nothing but manipulate symbols for us, all day long.

Delmania• 8 years ago

I didn't really read any symbolism into this. I think it's more that it was a great mystery. The island is so out of the way the presence of a derelict lifeboat is going to intrigue people and motivate them to figure who was there, when they were there, and what they were doing.

aphrax• 8 years ago

slight tangent - but I've never heard of the 'Roaring Forties' - Turns out it's the name for a particular set of winds - Fascinating stuff

praptak• 8 years ago

Forties refers to the set of latitudes where this occurs.

yardie• 8 years ago

Open a browser window to windy.com and scroll down to the lower Southern Ocean latitudes. You'll see the complex weather patterns that exist down there [0]. Further south is the Furious Fifties.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Forties

dustinupdyke• 8 years ago

Great read. If you enjoyed, you may also like Island of the Lost. https://www.audible.com/pd/History/Island-of-the-Lost-Audiob...

"Auckland Island is a godforsaken place in the middle of the Southern Ocean, 285 miles south of New Zealand. With year-round freezing rain and howling winds, it is one of the most forbidding places in the world. To be shipwrecked there means almost certain death."

Robotbeat• 8 years ago

This reminds me of The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne.

An abandoned lifeboat at world’s end (2011)

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